J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 eBook

“It looks like a hand,” said he.
“By Jove, it is a hand—­pointing towards
the forest with a finger.”

“Don’t mind the finger; look only on that
black blurred mark, and from the point where you stand,
taking that point for your direction, look to the
forest. Take some tree or other landmark for an
object, enter the forest there, and pursue the same
line, as well as you can, until you find little flowers
with leaves like wood-sorrel, and with tall stems
and a red blossom, not larger than a drop, such as
you have not seen before, growing among the trees,
and follow wherever they seem to grow thickest, and
there you will find him.”

All the time that Feltram was making this little address,
Sir Bale was endeavouring to fix his route by such
indications as Feltram described; and when he had
succeeded in quite establishing the form of a peculiar
tree—­a melancholy ash, one huge limb of
which had been blasted by lightning, and its partly
stricken arm stood high and barkless, stretching its
white fingers, as it were, in invitation into the forest,
and signing the way for him——­

“I have it now,” said he. “Come
Feltram, you’ll come a bit of the way with me.”

Feltram made no answer, but slowly shook his head,
and turned and walked away, leaving Sir Bale to undertake
his adventure alone.

The strange sound they had heard from the midst of
the forest, like the rumble of a storm or the far-off
trembling of a furnace, had quite ceased. Not
a bird was hopping on the grass, or visible on bough
or in the sky. Not a living creature was in sight—­never
was stillness more complete, or silence more oppressive.

It would have been ridiculous to give way to the old
reluctance which struggled within him. Feltram
had strode down the slope, and was concealed by a
screen of bushes from his view. So alone, and
full of an interest quite new to him, he set out in
quest of his adventures.

CHAPTER XX

The Haunted Forest

Sir Bale Mardykes walked in a straight line, by bush
and scaur, over the undulating ground, to the blighted
ash-tree; and as he approached it, its withered bough
stretched more gigantically into the air, and the
forest seemed to open where it pointed.

He passed it by, and in a few minutes had lost sight
of it again, and was striding onward under the shadow
of the forest, which already enclosed him. He
was directing his march with all the care he could,
in exactly that line which, according to Feltram’s
rule, had been laid down for him. Now and then,
having, as soldiers say, taken an object, and fixed
it well in his memory, he would pause and look about
him.

As a boy he had never entered the wood so far; for
he was under a prohibition, lest he should lose himself
in its intricacies, and be benighted there. He
had often heard that it was haunted ground, and that
too would, when a boy, have deterred him. It was
on this account that the scene was so new to him,
and that he cared so often to stop and look about
him. Here and there a vista opened, exhibiting
the same utter desertion, and opening farther perspectives
through the tall stems of the trees faintly visible
in the solemn shadow. No flowers could he see,
but once or twice a wood anemone, and now and then
a tiny grove of wood-sorrel.